Bernd Korz has announced that he will cease all development on Zeta [German], which effectively means Zeta will no longer be in development. Korz already wanted to quit development on Zeta when YellowTAB went belly up, but the numerous requests from customers to continue development eventually dragged him across the line. However, after the spat with Magnussoft, enough is enough for Korz. He states that he is not sure if and when the service pack to Zeta 1.5 will be released. He also states that he is not sure if and when he will open source or give to Haiku his contributions to Zeta. He explicitely states nor yT, nor Magnussoft own the source code to his work. My take: While I can understand Bernd, I am also sad to see this happen. For the little money and manpower Bernd had at his disposal, he did a magnificent job in making Zeta a usable operating system. I already knew this was about to happen, but a sad day it remains for Zeta users.

What enterprise customers? Not that I disagree with your logic, but I'm not aware of any "enterprise" customers who bought into Zeta. Any who did ought to go outside and shoot themselves in the foot a few times, just for good measure.

I've got no sympathy for anybody who used Zeta in an enterprise deployment, that's pure insanity.

I would expect those using Tunetracker.com software will not need to change their OS until haiku is out. Actually I think it still runs well on old stock Beos sold at Purplus (As long as you get compatible hardware)

They probably should've known better. Haiku might survive because it is a hobby OS for geeks, but as a business venture, Zeta never had a chance. If the most we can hope for is that a bunch of OSS apps get ported, it doesn't hold much appeal for anybody except those who want to gawk at 10 videos playing at the same time with no frame skipping

All things considered, Bernd performed a good job. Yes, he made mistakes which I think were from inexperience and some things could have been done better on his part. And he was shady on the license agreement with Be Inc, but I think he didn't want to jeopardize the deal ( by giving out too much info or details ) - who knows for sure his reasons?

Having Zeta & Haiku would have given a greater presence to BeOS. Now it is upto Haiku to attract users & developers. Well, I guess this is kinda good in a sense, because now you only have to support Haiku for programs & applications.

Well, Bernd could still release 1.51, but with less features. Hopefully so, to benefit those that upgraded to 1.5. I'm not sure how far along they are with 1.51 to release it. Should just fix as many things possible and then just release it "as is" ( even if unfinished ).

As for giving Zeta source to Haiku project. Have to be careful here, because I believe Bernd had signed a license agreement with CEO of Be Inc, allowing him to use BeOS 5.1 ( Dano ) code. Which actually belongs to Access now. And do not want Access to accuse Haiku of taking / incorporating Dano code in their OS. So, depends on what is open sourced and should be carefully examined by Haiku before even considering acceptance. ( Ndis Wrapper would be nice though ).

Working collaboratively with FOSS entities to get legal access to source code and the backing of existing developers for porting code to Zeta? Hell NO.

Raping the goodwill of the BeOS community with used-car-salesman tactics? Oh heck yeah.

Finally the community can start to heal from the years of splintering. The only viable option (and many of us have been saying this for years) is Haiku. I just hope everyone learns a lesson from the Amiga camp and let's this go. There is no business opportunity for the (LONG) dead BeOS / Zeta code.

Finally the community can start to heal from the years of splintering.

I note that any comment that is sceptical of Bernd Korz and Zeta is fiercely modded down. For some reason, some people seem to equate scepticism with bursting the BeOS bubble. This is fanboi delusion, not the critical and market aware approach the real world needs if something is to move from aspirations to delivery.

I'm glad Bernd Korz and Zeta are on the ropes, and remain sceptical of any peace offering. Simply, I see it as a buy off and possible route to worm back into play when Haiku starts motoring. I can imagine the "based on Zeta" stunt Bernd Korz could pull if the mood took him.

Haiku is the future, and the basic organisation of the project, sound design, and overall mature approach is a good basis for attracting finance, corporate support, and market share. While the future is always uncertain I'm confident Haiku R1 and beyond will mark a new beginning.

Neither english or japanese are my native langage. Even when I would do so, a native speaker should check it for gramatical errors first.
Also this case seems to be very international,
(Be Inc. and PalmSource :the USA, YellowTab and Magnussoft Germany, Access: Japan)
i'm no lawyer and know almost nothing about international laws, about the possible consequences of the patens on parts of the code, and the legality in various parts of the world.
Also, I'm not an OS developer or code maintainer.
Access, being a japanese company, I suppose also needs some understanding of Japanese culture, wich for me, i don't know that much about. I suppose for requesting this having a better change of being successfull, the request should be done by japanese people.

If Bernd Korz is considering signing over to Haiku any source code he can prove ownership to that's great. What I'm not going to do is get too excited about his vagueness. Until I see code handed over and Zeta shut down it's not a done deal in my mind. My take: Bernd Korz is on the ropes and trying to bleed some sympathy from the community by acting as a good guy to take the heat off his shady reputation. Haiku has momentum, and that makes it a great day for Zeta users.

Maybe it's time for all armchair Haiku supporters to put their money where their mouths are: if we can buy the Zeta source code for MIT licensed use, it would be the donation possible to Haiku. Even if you can get "only" a forced-open license like the GPL, you could still fork Haiku and have a GPL'd OpenBeOS.

Blender was very successful this way and has evolved into an application that would have been very unlikely to happen had it started as from the scratch OSS project. Could it work again? I know I'd put down my cash.

Maybe it's time for all armchair Haiku supporters to put their money where their mouths are: if we can buy the Zeta source code for MIT licensed use, it would be the donation possible to Haiku.

You're assuming that Haiku's devs even wants that code at this point...

I highly doubt that Haiku is going to throw away their kernel and app_server work thus far and swap in the older, potentially cruft-laden stuff from BeOS/Zeta.

One of Haiku's goals is to improve upon the original BeOS by fixing the problems. There are many aspects of the Haiku kernel that already target this goal, and have R2 in mind.

I dunno about you, but if I was tasked with rebuilding something from scratch, and then when I'm 80-90% done, someone came along and told me that I could buy what they had already developed - I'd probably turn them down knowing that my code was 1. well understood by me and others in the project 2. designed for the future and 3. something I had created with pride.

Now, if Zeta contained any bits and pieces that Haiku didn't already have, but needed - then I would consider those parts to be useful. I suspect at this point, that basically boils down to drivers and maybe a few apps.

Even better! It's cheaper then! Buy just the things that are missing that are boring to write and debug anyway. License the drivers and Locale Kit. Get the media codecs. Plus it's mostly code that has all of the kinks worked out already - remember, most of that stuff is from Be and has seen bugfixes and optimizations.

Don't buy into the "cruft" myth: code doesn't rust. It doesn't rot. Code doesn't decompose over time. (hint: Why is no one asking for LaTeX to be rewritten from the scratch? By god is LaTeX old code!)

I don't know what your experience so far is, but in my experience as a software developer, it takes forever to work out all the kinks and subtle bugs in something you just wrote. "From the scratch" is convenient, but very hard to get right. Ask Apple about Copland: all-new, modern, infinitely superior - it never shipped and was replaced with NeXTStep (which in turn was based on "old crufty" BSD). Ask Microsoft how long it took until OS/2 finally was a viable successor to DOS - it had turn into NT first. Remember how long it took Mozilla to take off, only to be replaced with FireFox.

There's plenty of cruft in the BeOS source tree. Plenty of badly commented (or worse, commented in random European language) code. Plenty of stuff that works by smoke and mirrors, and a lot of stuff that was never released (the OpenGL based App Server, for example.) However, there's a lot of stuff that *does* work too. I'm sure we'd all be happy to see Net Server on Haiku to fill the gap until the Kernel netstack was finished. And hell, BONE... well.

(I'm guessing of course, reading into other people's comments, including ex-Be engineers and reading between the lines.)

I guess I'm only stating that despite all the possibilities that might emerge from the open-sourcing of Zeta/BeOS code - it probably won't benefit Haiku much.

If anything, it would likely "destroy" the Haiku project entirely, or probably cause a great number of people to lose interest in it. A great many people will end up flocking to the "official" BeOS/Zeta codebase and start building their own distro out of it.

It sounds like you are one of those people. In other words, you would immediately care less about the design choices and code quality of Haiku, and rather have something now. That is not the goal of Haiku.

Imagine if Windows was open-sourced... would that make ReactOS better?

Don't buy into the "cruft" myth: code doesn't rust. It doesn't rot. Code doesn't decompose over time. (hint: Why is no one asking for LaTeX to be rewritten from the scratch? By god is LaTeX old code!)

Being a software developer myself for the last 14 years, I think that you are simply misunderstanding the definition "cruft"... sometimes it's just better to rewrite then to reuse...

It has very little to do with the "age" of the code - although I used that as a further example in my post (unrelated to cruft) - old kernel code doesn't necessarily know about newer technologies and may make assumptions about hardware that are simply no longer true (I'd cite examples, but I realized you can pretty much pick up any OS as an example).

We're talking about an OS here, not some app that has one single purpose that will never change. I dare say comparing LaTeX to Haiku is ridiculous!

Maybe it's time for all armchair Haiku supporters to put their money where their mouths are: if we can buy the Zeta source code for MIT licensed use, it would be the donation possible to Haiku. Even if you can get "only" a forced-open license like the GPL, you could still fork Haiku and have a GPL'd OpenBeOS.

As I suggested in my earlier comment (which seems to have finally given way to partisan modding), I'm not keen on Haiku going anywhere near Zeta or Bernd Korz. It's too suspect and the stink will carry over. I won't believe anything until I see it, and both Zeta and Bernd Korz have swallowed enough money. Haiku is best off not getting sucked in or trying to rush things.

Haiku will get itself into a position where previous customers of BeOS and the dead-end Zeta will have a real option. Staying focused on that, and the benefits of a good design and no involvement with fork mad GPL brigade seem to be working. If push comes to shove, I'm happy that Haiku learns to stand on its own two feet now rather than later. Maybe Haiku is better off just saying no?

The good news is that an actual codebase derived from the real BeOS 5 code could be "liberated" very soon.

No, they can't legally "liberate" the original source - I'm pretty positive that any agreement that may exist between Bernd and original/current copyright holders should prevent that.

It would be no better than the "leaked Dano" code... and maybe that's what you mean: that somehow the Zeta source will be "leaked" into the public now. This would basically be pissing in the water supply even more and ensure that BeOS/Zeta (and any potentially derived work) is a COMPLETE "hands-off" for individuals and/or corporations looking to stay legal.

But, what you are probably referring to is statements by Bernd that any code he and his team have written may be open-sourced. This may include any new drivers and apps that they have built themselves. It still could be a huge boost for Haiku, and it would be nice to see something like that happen.

A while ago when I went to download some drivers and source from BeBits, I found a note instead of the code/programs saying the author had handed them over to YellowTab to encourage the expansion of Zeta.

I never saw the source again, even on YellowTabs pages. These drivers and other code that were donated to YellowTab contain no IP secrets, nor do they break any copyright of BeOS/Dano.

Zeta seems to be a legal minefield waiting to happen. I personally don't see any developers wanting to touch that code. There's too many hands in that code, most notably those of Palm and Access.

Palm is one of those companies that's been dying for a while, kind of like how the SCO Group was/is. I would not be surprised in the least if Palm or Access got litigious over the open sourcing of Zeta/BeOS just to see additional revenue, as Palm's proverbial well, the Treo, is quite old and rapidly becoming outdated. I think Access has already written off PalmOS as a loss, i.e. really bad business transaction.

However, Haiku is quite a promising project, and one I look forward to running in the future. Having a fully open system allows for more contributions, and less hacks to get modern apps to run on it. Their ethos seems to be about doing it for themselves, as opposed to using the Zeta code. In the end, this makes a better product.

What's legal and what not depends only what the license agreement is under what that code went to Zeta to begin with - and that is something only the parties that are involved know about, the rest of us can only speculate.

I'm not sure if Haiku should take any code from Zeta. The plus side is that the code would push them faster towards a complete OS. The negative side is the alleged "baggage" that comes with Zeta's source.

I'm sure the devs over in the Haiku camp will make the right choice, but personally I'd think long and hard about implementing anything from Zeta.

Yeah, true, I guess they could. Would take a pretty big effort, I'm sure. Then you always have the problem of having the Haiku code potentially "corrupted" depending on who actually does the sorting out.

A similar thing went on with ReactOS. Not exactly the same, I know....but still in the same ballpark.

Even of Korz open-sourced the whole of Zeta, it wouldn't be super useful for Haiku. Perhaps some applications could be reused, because the API is compatible, but it would probably take longer for them to come to grips with the new source base than it would to finish off whatever they have left to do in Haiku.

I've observed that it takes a long time to wrangle commercial code bases into any sort of shape suitable for development by an open source project. XFS took years to integrate into Linux. The Solaris open-sourcing was handled incredibly well by Sun (not a code drop, but a real ongoing process), and I bet there are still not a lot of people outside of Sun comfortable with the code base.

Open source code tends to have a relatively lower barrier to hacking. Development is done on public mailing lists, past revisions of the code are available, so there is a ton of knowledge that went into the existing code available for prospective developers. In commercial projects, a lot of that knowledge exists only in the heads of people who work at the company, and it can take months or years before the new developers really rediscover it.